Paris, December 1821
THE SESSIONS of the National Assembly offered a spectacle of interest that the meetings of our Chambers are far from approaching. One had to get up very early to find a seat in the crowded gallery. The deputies arrived eating, talking, and gesticulating; they formed groups in different parts of the room, according to their opinions. The minutes were read aloud, and then a prearranged subject was discussed or an extraordinary motion was set forth. It was never a matter of some insipid article of law. The order of the day rarely lacked a scheme of destruction. Deputies spoke pro or contra, and everyone, for better or worse, improvised their speeches. These debates grew tempestuous. The galleries joined in the discussion, applauded and cheered, hissed and booed at the speakers. The president rang his bell, while the deputies shouted at each other from bench to bench. Mirabeau the Younger seized his opponent by the collar; Mirabeau the Elder cried out, “Silence! The thirty votes!”
One day, I was sitting behind the Royalist opposition. In front of me was a gentleman from Dauphiné, a swarthy little man, who jumped on his chair in a fury and called to his friends, “Let us fall upon those beggars, sword in hand!”
He pointed toward the majority. The ladies of the market, who sat knitting in the galleries, heard him, rose from their seats, and shouted all together, with stockings in their hands and foaming mouths, “Hang them from the lampposts!”
The Vicomte de Mirabeau, Lautrec, and a few other young nobles wanted to take the galleries by storm.
Soon this fracas was drowned out by another: petitioners armed with pikes appeared at the bar.
“The people are dying of hunger,” they said. “It’s time to take action against the aristocrats and rise to the level of the situation.”
The chairman assured these citizens of his respect. “We have our eyes on the traitors,” he replied, “and the Assembly will see that justice is done.”
At this, another uproar broke out: the deputies of the Right shouted that we were on the road to anarchy; the deputies of the Left replied that the people were free to express their will, that they had every right to complain of men who collaborated with despotism, seated in the very midst of the nation’s representatives. That was how they described their colleagues to the sovereign people, who waited outside beneath the streetlamps.
The evening sessions were even more scandalous than the morning sessions: men spoke better and more boldly by candlelight. The Riding House was then as good as a theater, where one of the greatest dramas in the world was being played out. The leading characters still belonged to the old order of things; their terrible understudies, hidden behind them, hardly said a word. At the end of one violent debate, I saw a common-looking deputy mount the rostrum. His face was gray and inexpressive, and his hair was neatly combed. He was very properly dressed, like the steward of a good house or a village notary careful of his appearance. He read a long and boring report to which no one listened. I asked his name: it was Robespierre. The well-heeled were just getting ready to leave their parlors, and already the sabots were kicking at the door.[10]